Who was Abraham Lincoln? For starters, he was the 16th president of the United States, leading it through one of the darkest periods of its history, the American Civil War. But, who was this remarkable man, really?
Lincoln was originally born on the frontiers of western Kentucky, he spent most of his formative years in Kentucky and Indiana, eventually moving to Illinois, where he educated himself, became a lawyer, and served in the Illinois House of Representatives and the United States House of Representatives, all before he won the election to the U.S. presidency.
After he won the election, before he even moved to Washington, D.C. to start his presidency, the southern states knew the direction the country was headed, and they seceded to form the Confederate States of America. It was a little over a year after that, in April 1861, that the American Civil War started when the south attacked Fort Sumter.
What makes Lincoln such a remarkable person is how he handled his leadership role and got the country through the war. In fact, it would be frightening to think what would have happened to this country had he not been president. He used his political abilities to pit his opponents against each other in order to keep them at bay. He used his speaking abilities to persuade others to his side and point of view. He used his role as president to make sure that the Union army had the best generals, to make sure that southern ports were blocked so that they could not get the resources they needed for their war effort, to make sure that the British didn’t interfere in the civil war, and to bring freedom to black slaves, first through the Emancipation Proclamation, then through the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment.
It is said that the period known as Reconstruction in American history would have been very different had he served a second term as president and wasn’t assassinated in April 1865. But what he did do was strengthen the power and role of the federal government, helped to modernize the American economy, and kept the nation from falling apart, as well as what he is most famous for, which was eliminating slavery once and for all, and keeping the nation together when it could have separated into two different powers.
